The goal of this contest is to modify ( hack
) in anyway the Wowwee-Hasbro BIOBugs
created by Mark Tilden.

I first got my Bio-bug at SEARS. I was just walking in the
toys section when my instinct told me to turn left to the lego section, so I
turned, looked around and saw the Ultimate BIO-BUGS.

I was so excited, that there was about 20 minutes of
starring at the box and another 20 minutes of
hesitation between the GREEN or the RED Bio-bug.I
finally took the red Bio-bug.

To see my bio-bug hack, close your eyes and>>click here<< to see my
complete bio-bug hack. Be sure to close your eyes for about 10 second so the
pictures can load. ( The image is 37K ) To see more pictures of the finished
product, just scroll down.

If you don't see a image on this
page just press refresh to reload the
entire page.

Before entering my bio-bug hack, I want to tell you that hacking a
bio-bug is
not easy. It is really hard to start the hack and have the courage to drill, cut
and melt the bio-bug. Went you look at the main circuit board, you just cannot figure a way to "play" with the component and behaviour. It is so
small and fragile that you can easily break your bio-bug. It is hard to start a
hack with NO clue or documentation. You mainly have to start with your
imagination.

A friend and I have measured the frequency of the infrared signal emitter for
the remote control. We thought it would be nice to control the robot by
sending signals to the bio-bug.

Here are the pictures of the oscilloscope. ( Each image are
640x480 and aproximately
150Ko in size )

Over here, you can see the right and left signal. You can
see that in the right signal the frequency 1 and
2 are large. In the left signal there is the same two large frequencies ( 1 and 2
) but the first one is divided in two.

Food signal

Right signal

Left signal

Fast walking signal

Training signal

I asked my friend if he could reproduce these two frequencies and he tought it
this possible with two 555 timers ( or one 556 ) to send different frequency ( see below
). But after asking a electronic
teacher and friends, he realised that it was more difficult to reproduce this
frequency.

I wanted to make a light seeking bio-bug by sending
"fake" signals to
the eyes. I could have used a HERBIE circuit that would control
each 556 dual timer independently.

Over here I will describe my hack:

NB: You can click on any miniature picture to see the
original image. All images are 640x480 and approximately 60Ko in size.

> First hack:

First of all, everybody was talking about the loud noise
of the Bio-bug (I think it is not *really* annoying ).
So I got this idea to change the volume of my Bio-bug. There is more then one
solution for this problem, like putting a resistor in serie with the piezo ( Figure
1)

I decided to add a
variable resistor to have a real volume control. I got this cool idea concerning
the volume control, I tought I could control ON/OFF, volume control and Normal
tone ( Figure 2 ).
But it won't be cool if you can't hear the bio-bug screaming if the volume
control is OFF, so I add a LED to see is reaction.

The second hack concerns the mechanic aspect
of the bug. My robot was walking around in the kitchen, it got stuck when it
encountered a chair leg. The chair leg got in between the head and the front leg.
So I added some sensors between the head and the leg to avoid any object to
enter the .

This hack seems quite easy but NO, it is not! I
had some difficulties while testing my NEW sensor because I forgot to connect the blue
wire to the main board while testing the new sensor ( Figure 3
). As you can suspect, it didn't work until I finally found the problem after
installing a new type of sensor.

Over here, you can see my first and second
prototype of sensor ( Figure 4 ). The second version of my
sensor is made of .22 catridge bullet. Each prototype sensor uses Solarbotics
surgical-grade stainless-stell spring tubing. Really nice and COOL :-)

I have painted my bio-bug with a aerosol can. I didn't
have yellow model paint in hand. Aerosol is not really the best for that kind of
job
because it eats ( dissolve ) the bio-bug plastic. I had to be really careful in
this paint job. On third picture ( cleaning the biobug ) my
dad and I cleaned the bio-bug with brake cleaner. We took Q-tips to clean the
excess yellow.